


Take Your Coffee Black

by minxy



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, s7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxy/pseuds/minxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He ran his fingers over a lacquered surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Your Coffee Black

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jenlev](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jenlev).



He drew a blank.

From the moment he walked through the circle and down the metal ramp, out of the green of the forest and into concrete and weapons, he expected the memories to flood him, but they didn’t. He expected to feel at home, among family, and warm, but the light was different, the angles harsh. He felt on display and he froze up, cold.

Not even a removal of the armed men, a room with fabric walls like he was accustomed to, a woman he should have known, a return of his possessions (they said), none of these was enough to mimic torchlight, firelight, the smell and sound of crackling wood, the visual cues of home and hearth and warmth.

He couldn’t even tell them what he was feeling, couldn’t register good, bad, familiar, alien. Only different, all different.

A hollowed out shell of a man stripped of his borrowed identity, he was not sure he truly existed. Ever, anywhere.

His friend-- Jim, or John, or Jack-- was guiding him through the stares and starts of recognition he could not return, was challenging him with words, pushing, wanting, but never so hard that he—that Daniel-- lost his balance. And that was surprising, because he felt much more precariously perched than his companion seemed to think he was.

There was a box. Many boxes, probably. In the shock of images, nostalgia for the memories of places he could not name but looking at their daguerreotype, knew he had been. Where the sun beat down hard and the sand blew into your clothes, where the animals yawned awful breath but the horizon brought wonders. Familiar.

He was accompanied by ghosts he couldn’t name, and lights he couldn't blow out.

The next day, he walked the halls and remembered how to read, how to translate, how to feel, how to work the water system. After he spoke to people, listened to them, offered what he could and left the meeting more confused, he remembered the box.

He was half-way through it, paper rustling lightly around him, stone and glass and paper and ink set as reverently outside it as they had been stored within, that he ran his fingers over a lacquered surface, a perfect circle. Daniel felt the rise in varnish where an image was painted over the background, felt the porous underside where it was meant to be set down. Drew his fingers through the handle and knew how he would hold the cup firmly, carefully cradling whatever what inside it.

He scrambled through the sea of paper, still without his sea legs, to get to the door and find the man’s office. He had to ask several people and finally turned around for the assistance of his ever-present airman.

He forgot to knock, forgot to close the door behind him. Daniel walked into Jack’s office with a grin on his face and Jack set down the telephone receiver.

“You liked that one.” Jack said as Daniel placed the mug on his desk.

“I’ve never seen this one before, Jack.” Daniel said with certainty as he turned the face towards the other man; wish you were here, it said.

“You sure about that?” Jack asked, eyes never leaving Daniel’s face.

“Yeah. It’s starting to come back to me.” Daniel said, smiling broadly. It was infectious, and Jack’s eye’s crinkled out of their interrogating innocent look. When he smiled and shoved his chair back, Daniel knew Jack would hug him.

Still, he was surprised by the warmth of it, how it enveloped him; he knew he was not a small man. They fit, though. He fit, in this crazy concrete planet where warmth and sand and desert existed somewhere.

Or he would, when he remembered how. In the meantime, he had renewed faith that he had existed here once, and was welcome back again.


End file.
